Harry Potter's Letter To The Wizarding World
by jamesdjx
Summary: Readers of the Harry Potter books all know the exact truth of his involvement in the 2nd war. But what about the wizarding world?
**Harry Potter's Letter to The Wizarding World.**

 **Introduction**

The idea for this short piece came to me after reading a few stories set after the wizarding war. It came to my attention that although we the readers knew the whole story behind Harry's adventures, the world in which he lives in would only have fragments of truth based on witness testimonies, exaggerated and inaccurate media coverage and rumours that had circulated at the time. Looking at the kind of person Harry is I would highly suspect that he would try to avoid too many interviews or offers to publish an authorised biography, and would therefore want the truth to be out there somehow. If I was in his shoes this is how I would approach it. I hope you get some enjoyment from reading this and please feel free to approach me with any feedback, good or bad. This is my first fan fiction and I'd be very grateful to know if I'm on the right track as an author!

Dear fellow wizards, witches and magical creatures alike,

I am writing to you all today following the tragic recent events of the 2nd wizarding war. What you are reading is a written version of a speech I gave at the Ministry of Magic on the 2nd of June 1998. I am writing this to be circulated freely amongst the people of our world as I believe that everyone deserves to know the truth, especially as there have been so many rumours and deceiving media stories surrounding me over the years that I'm sure many of you aren't sure what to believe! I will not be writing or authorizing any biographies about myself so I hope that you will accept this as a true account of my involvement in the terrible times we have all been facing due to the reign of terror inflicted by Tom Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort.

I make a point of using his real name because (in the words of my mentor and friend Albus Dumbledore) "Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself". In this case the thing is a man, and I need to you all to know that he was no more than a man, a very evil and powerful one but a man all the same. His apparent immortality was down to his fear of death being so great that he found ways of keeping himself alive using murder and powerful dark magic to create objects known as Horcruxes. Now I know there will be some of you who will gasp and the mere mention of that word and some of you won't know what they are, however I can't omit their existence from this account as they have played a major role in the existence and downfall of Lord Voldemort. Basically a Horcrux is an object uses to store a small fragment of a wizard's soul after their death. To create one a wizard must first commit a horrific act of evil (usually murder) which is a certain way to splinter a person's soul, and then perform the dark magic required to isolate a small part of them self into an object of some kind, which technically keeps a part of the person alive. As for the fine details of making these terrible objects I have no idea. I only knew that this was how Tom Riddle kept himself alive, and that destroying them was the key to destroying him.

Ok, now I'm going to try and keep this in chronological order but please forgive me if I go off track in places. I'm just trying to help people make sense of what has happened in the simplest way possible, whilst trying to make sense of it all myself to be honest.

First things first, one of the few things the media did get right is that I am indeed the chosen one! Not by some mystical force but by the choosing of a dark wizard. As I'm sure you all know, Voldemort killed my parents in Godric's Hollow and straight away after attempted to take my life as well. This wasn't a random attack but one based on fear of a prophecy made by a magical seer about a child born at the end of July who "has the power to vanquish the dark lord" and that neither of them can live while the other survives. Now let's make one thing clear this wasn't a case of prophecies coming true because fate has decided events in advance, the chosen one could have been either myself or another guy who was born around the same time, however Voldemort chose me as I was of a similar blood status to him. You see it was he who made the prophecy come true all by himself. He was so scared by the possibility of me being a threat to him that he chose to kill me as a baby, whereas in reality if he had ignored the prophecy it is unlikely our paths would ever have crossed.

At the time, my survival of his killing curse and Tom's disappearance seems to have added to the belief that I was somehow in possession of unique powers capable of destroying him and that I was somehow special, however this is one of many rumours that just aren't true. I survived due to ancient natural magic which dictates that if a person dies protecting someone then the person they were defending receives an extremely powerful magical protection which is almost invincible. It's as simple as that. My mother Lily died standing in front of my cot trying to keep Voldemort away from me, and that protection passed on to me at the point of her death which caused his killing curse to rebound back on him, and that was that. Well it would have been except his Horcruxes tethered him to life and left him barely alive to wander the wilderness for a few years!

Now there are many rumours surrounding Voldemort's return but some of you may be surprised to know that he was seen again as early as 1991, during my first year at Hogwarts. A few of you will have heard about my defeat of the evil professor Quirrill, but what hasn't been publicly known so far is that he was being manipulated by Tom Riddle himself, barely alive and attached to the back of Quirrill's head, basically using him as a host. Again I used no special powers of my own to defeat him, I had a lot of help from my friends and a lot of good luck, and he was destroyed simply by touching me and getting a blast of my mother's protection once again. You see Voldemort just couldn't comprehend that love could be so powerful; it took him another 3 years to even work that one out!

During my second year at Hogwarts he tried again, well not him physically but a memory of him stored in his old diary which was planted on a friend of mine by a Death Eater, and in turn he was able to possess the poor girl and use her to get to me. This diary was the first Horcrux I encountered, although no one really knew what it was at that time. Once again a lot of luck was on my side as I decided to stab the diary with a Basilisk fang found in the chamber of secrets; coincidentally enough Basilisk venom is one of the few things able to destroy a Horcrux. And not forgetting my awesome friends who were as always by my side throughout the dangers of that year.

Next came my encounter with escaped prisoner Sirius Black, my godfather and supposedly a Death Eater who betrayed my parents to Voldemort and sought my death. Also not true. I couldn't make this any clearer; Sirius Black was an innocent man. My parents changed their secret keeper at the last minute and it was Peter Pettigrew (also known as Wormtail) who betrayed them and set up Sirius to take responsibility for it, along with the deaths of several innocent muggles. He then hid for many years in his animagus form of a rat, the cheeky git even hid with one of my best Friend's family as their pet! It was my friends and I who discovered the truth and admittedly helped him escape from a tower at Hogwarts, from which he fled and re-joined the order of the Phoenix a year later to help in the fight against Riddle, until his death at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange. Of course the ministry would never believe the word of us kids, and continued the charade of Sirius being an evil threat, even after his death. As for Wormtail, after being exposed we tried to take him back to Hogwarts but he escaped and somehow found Voldemort again, which leads us directly to the next part of these events, the return of Tom Riddle to a body.

At the end of my 4th year at Hogwarts I was in a maze challenge as part of the Triwizard tournament (which I didn't enter voluntarily by the way). At the end there was a cup which myself and Cedric Diggory touched at the same time and found ourselves being port keyed to a graveyard, a situation set up by Barty Crouch Junior who spent the year disguised as Alistor Moody with the help of polyjuice potion. After watching Cedric mercilessly killed as "the spare" I found myself magically tied to the grave of Tom Riddles father while witnessing a horrific magical ceremony involving my blood and Wormtail's severed hand amongst other things, which in turn allowed Lord Voldemort to return to his body. How did I escape? Pure coincidence and a bit of luck as usual! As it happened my wand and Voldemort's were somehow twinned (connected to his previous attempt on my life transferring powers) which meant if we cast at the same time the spells would lock and not reach each other, this caused a case of "prior incantatem" which allowed the personalities of my parents to come through and hold him off long enough to run for the portkey back to Hogwarts.

Even reading this I can see how it may sound ridiculous, and of course the rather misguided minister of magic at the time used this to make me out to be a liar, and somehow in cahoots with Dumbledore to destroy the ministry. His paranoia and denial resulted in attempts to discredit Dumbledore and he even had me put on full trial for daring to produce a patronus when my muggle cousin was being attacked by a dementor! Sadly the actions of Fudge and media manipulation resulted in Voldemort having a full year to hide and secretly gain power, a big lesson in using one's own mind and not always trusting those who should be trustworthy! The climax of all this came about when Voldemort used Occlumancy to trick me into believing that Sirius had been kidnapped and was being held at the ministry building in London. This resulted in my friends and I going to the ministry only to find I'd been brought there to retrieve the prophecy made about me so Voldemort could hear it for himself. The battle that ensued resulted in Sirius being killed by Bellatrix Lestrange and myself being possessed for a short while. So how do you escape from being possessed by a powerful dark wizard? With Dumbledore's encouragement I thought of my friends who have stuck by me, my parents and all the good people in my life, the love I felt combined with the grief of losing my godfather scared Voldemort away from my mind as it's something he'd never known or understood. You see you should never underestimate the power of love, it's helped me so much over the years and it can for you too.

That same night Dumbledore explained to me the consequences of the prophecy and the shocking discovery that I had to be the one who killed Voldemort. You can imagine the effect it had on me, how would a 15 year old boy have the power or knowledge to take out the most powerful dark wizards of all time? Especially as I knew I didn't have it in me to use the killing curse against anyone, one thing I'd learned that night is that unforgivable spells can't be users by any old wizard, I'd already had a pathetic attempt at shooting a Crucio at Bellatrix after she'd just killed my Sirius and failed miserably!

As you can imagine the events of that night left me shocked, grieving and more scared than ever, I now knew for certain that getting rid of Voldemort was compulsory, not just for my own survival but the future of the whole wizarding world lay on my shoulders.

Now for the game changer as they would say in muggle society. I spent a considerable amount of time with Dumbledore over the next year as he had arranged for me to have some private tuition with him to try and prepare me for the dangers that lay ahead. Naturally I assumed this would be lots of defensive magic and fighting skills but Dumbledore had something else in mind, learning about Voldemort's past to find ways to unsettle his future, know your enemy as some would say. It turns out that Voldemort had a similar past to myself in some ways, he was an orphan raised in a fairly unloving environment until his Hogwarts letter arrived. It made me realise how easily I could have been a totally different person which in itself is quite a scary thought. During this time I also learned about the Horcruxes Voldemort had made and that destroying them first was the only way anyone would truly be able to kill him. Dumbledore had already found one in the form of a ring; sadly he had made a grave mistake in handling the item and had a serious injury to his hand which had been contained for now but would eventually spread over his body. You see, at this point Dumbledore was dying from the powerful dark curse in that ring, I know this will be a shock to many of you and to be honest I didn't find out the truth about this either until over a year later. After searching for another Horcrux Dumbledore and I found ourselves at the top of the astronomy tower where Dumbledore was disarmed by one of my fellow students Draco Malfoy and then killed by Severus Snape. I am sorry I have to name Draco but his part in these events was crucial and I'd like you to know I do not believe him to be pure evil. He was just a misguided fool driven by beliefs instilled in him by his family, and by the time these events happened he was no more than a scared boy being manipulated by Voldemort for his own means as a way to get back at his parents for their mistakes. However it's important to remember that he disarmed Dumbledore before he was killed, more on that later. As for Snape, I thought (as did most people at the time) that he was a cold blooded murderer. However I was later to learn that Dumbledore had ordered him to do what he did as a kind of mercy killing, the curse from the Horcrux was killing him and he wanted Snape to save him from a long and undignified death. Although Snape had been a Death Eater many years ago he was 100 percent on our side during this second war, this is something I want to be very clear about. Sadly the wizarding world had to believe otherwise at this point, for very good reasons which I shall go into shortly.

So, once again I was left grieving for yet another person I cared for very much and feeling more scared than ever. How the hell did I even stand a chance without Dumbledore around to guide me? I honestly had no idea.

So now we come to the part where the wizarding world presumed me to be in hiding. OK technically I was, but as I'm sure you all know I was being portrayed as "Undesirable number 1" by the Death Eater infiltrated Ministry and the media had followed suit so what else could I do to find the rest of the Horcruxes without being arrested or killed? Please believe me I wasn't hiding in a corner doing nothing while people were dying to protect me, I had work to do to ensure that even if I didn't survive Voldemort he would at least be mortal again.

My best friends Ron, Hermione and I started out on our quest a little prematurely, the Death Eaters couldn't even let Ron's family have a wedding in peace so having received a warning of their approach we swiftly apparated out and began our mission. We hid out at a safe house for a while where we discovered the location of another Horcrux, attached to the neck of the ministry official known as Dolores Umbridge, a horrific woman who was sent to teach at Hogwarts during my 5th year and took great pleasure in petty rule making and quite frankly using methods of torture to punish or manipulate students. She was taking a similar approach to muggle borns under the new order and took great pleasure in making people's lives a misery. I can only hope that the ministry will unearth characters like this and expel them from office, if not bring them to justice.

So yes, one rumour I can confirm as true is that we did indeed smuggle ourselves into the ministry of magic and caused quite a disturbance. Apologies are due here to the acting minister and anyone else innocently caught up in our escapade, I hope you will understand this was a necessary crime against the Death Eaters and no one else.

After gate-crashing an unfair trial and almost getting ourselves killed (again) we managed to retrieve the Horcrux and escape. Sadly we were followed to our safe house and the secret was broken so we had to escape, spending the rest of our quest travelling up and down the country in a magical tent, scared to stay in one place for more than a night or two in case we were discovered.

Aside from discovering the location of the remaining Horcruxes we had to work out how we were going to destroy the one we had. It's not like I could just walk into Hogwarts and procure some more basilisk fangs after all! Thankfully the answer to this was given to me late one night when a patronus of a doe led me to a frozen pond which was concealing the sword of Gryffindor. The genius who is Hermione had already worked out that this sword was imbibed with Basilisk venom and would be suitable for destroying Horcruxes, something we looked into after discovering that Dumbledore had left it to me in his will. We knew that the sword was the property of Hogwarts and not Dumbledore's to give so we couldn't help wondering why he needed me to have it. I want to point out that the doe patronus that led me to this pond belonged to Severus Snape, once again helping the fight against Voldemort while keeping his trust in his guise as a Death Eater. My fellow students will all tell you that Snape and I shared a mutual dislike of each other at Hogwarts; however he always did his best to keep me safe and help me even though he could never break his guise as the bad guy for fear of his cover being blown. Whatever happens I will always have massive respect for this man.

Next I'd like to tell you about our little trip to Malfoy Manor. No we weren't quite mad enough to go marching in there looking for a fight but sadly we were captured one night by a bunch of Voldemort's thugs and taken there by force, along with my school friend Dean Thomas and Griphook, one of the Gringotts goblins who had already been arrested. Hermione threw a stinging hex at me at the last minute to try and disguise my features but eventually the Death Eaters got suspicious. I have to say fair play to Draco Malfoy on this occasion, he knew exactly who we were but wouldn't commit to giving away our identities. We may have been enemies at school but even he did his bit to help on this occasion. A few other things of relevance happened while we were at Malfoy Manor, Bellatrix Lestrange tortured Hermione thinking that we had stolen the sword of Gryffindor from her vault at Gringotts and she was desperate to find out what else had been taken. The reality of the situation was that the sword in her vault was a fake given to her by Snape for safe keeping after some of my friends at Hogwarts tried to steal it. However Bellatrix's frantic desperation led us to highly suspect that there was something in her vault we needed, another Horcrux maybe?! While our friend was being tortured we were taken to the Basement of the manor to be held captive, all in earshot of Hermione's screams under the cruciatus curse. We weren't alone. In the basement was our friend Luna Lovegood and Mr Ollivander the wand maker. Griphook was summoned to verify whether the sword was genuine or not and thankfully he lied and said it was a fake. To cut a long story short we managed to escape Malfoy manor with the help of the Malfoy's ex house elf Dobby. I won't go into details but Dobby and I go back a few years previous to this and he came to my rescue once again, a true hero in my opinion. Sadly he didn't come out of this alive as Bellatrix Lestrange threw a knife at him just as we were apparating and it made contact with him before we disappeared. He died shortly after from his injuries. We gave him a proper burial and despite the views of many with regards to "less than human" magical creatures, I am proud to call Dobby my friend.

One very crucial thing happened during the events of Malfoy Manor; I duelled with and disarmed Draco Malfoy. Now, remember earlier I spoke of Draco disarming Dumbledore on the astronomy tower? Hold that thought, it's going to be very important shortly.

Following our escape from Malfoy manor we found ourselves at another safe house where we were all able to and recover for a bit and make plans for the next step of our journey. As much as being imprisoned was far from pleasant we were lucky compared to Mr Ollivander and Luna who were held captive and tortured badly for a lot longer than we were.

Now I'm sure many of you have heard about Voldemort's powers of mind control, how he can invade the minds of others for information at even use it to torture them to death. He even used it on me during my 5th year at Hogwarts, giving me horrible visions and luring me into the trap that led us all to the ministry of magic. Well, over the last year of the war these visions seemed to be returning but this time it was different, it was like I could see what he was up to and sometimes feel his emotion without him even knowing about it. I was to find out in the future that this was due to a sinister connection between us but more on that later. I've brought it up because around the time of Malfoy manor I had another one of these visions involving Voldemort and a very powerful wand he wanted. He obtained information from both Gregorovitch the wand maker and an elderly Gellert Grindelwald, the notorious dark wizard that Dumbledore had defeated many years before. Eventually he procured it for himself by breaking into the grave of Albus Dumbledore and plucking it from his hands. Just when you thought he couldn't stoop much lower huh?! I was given a lot of information on wandlore by Mr Ollivander during our stay at the safe house, especially on the subject of wands changing allegiance after their owners have been disarmed. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm waffling at this point but it will all make sense soon I promise.

Right, moving on. We had the probable location of the next Horcrux in a vault at Gringotts, I had no idea what it would be but I knew that once I was there I would be able to tell which object it was, once again the old Voldemort connection would actually work in my favour. The big question was how on earth were we breaking into a high security Wizard bank? The answer came in the form of a now recovered Griphook, whose knowledge of the bank helped us to get in, using polyjuice potion to fool the guards of course. I'm not proud of yet another illegal break in and once again I apologise to the authorities and to the staff of Gringotts, I have no intentions of being a criminal I promise! I'm not going to give away the bank's security secrets by going into details but we did get in and manage to procure the Horcrux from the Lestrange's vault, which I'm sad to say was the cup of Helga Hufflepuff, yet another part of our heritage that Voldemort has defiled. For all those who have heard about sightings of a dragon flying from Gringotts with three wizards attached to it, yes that was us making our escape. The dragon in question is now free and for fear of sounding too much like my friend Hagrid, is hopefully living a happier life than the torturous imprisonment he endured as part of the bank security system.

Cue another sinister insight into Tom Riddles mind, this time he had worked out that we were after Horcruxes and needless to say he was not amused in the slightest! What he did give away though, was that another Horcrux was at Hogwarts, there were no clues as to what it was but we knew that if we destroyed it then it would just be Nagini the snake (yes he even defiled his own pet) and Voldemort himself left. Not a big ask is it, getting back into my old school which was now being run by Death Eaters who would all love to be the ones to turn me over to their dark lord? Yeah we knew this was the big one and as usual we had no idea how we were going to pull it off.

We apparated to Hogsmeade and were instantly pursued by Death Eaters, thankfully help came in the form of Aberforth Dumbledore, Albus' brother. He smuggled us into his pub and after telling us some truths about his brother that would expose Rita Skeeter as the charlatan that she is, he revealed that he was in possession of a secret passage to the room of requirement in Hogwarts where many of our school friends were hiding. They were using it as a base for the Hogwarts resistance or in some cases to simply disappear after revolting against their Death Eater teachers one time too many. I should point out that not all the teachers were Death Eaters, most of the professors who were there before the takeover remained in their positions to try and protect students and quietly resist the regime. We took the passage into Hogwarts and were reunited with many faces I thought I may never see again. I felt much joy at seeing my friends but also guilt because I knew how much trouble I had just brought to the school, it didn't take Voldemort long to discover my location and his forces were advancing as we sat there talking. We eventually discovered the identity and location of the last Horcrux which turned out to be the "lost" diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, sadly another piece of our history which had to be destroyed.

Then reality kicked in, we had to kill Nagini and to get to her we had to find Voldemort. He was currently at the shrieking shack and we turned up just in time to see him set Nagini on Severus Snape and then disappear, not because he had discovered he was a spy for the resistance but because he believed that Snape killing Dumbledore made him the master of his wand, and that while Snape was alive he would never be it's true master.

Bear in mind that at this point I still believed Snape to be an evil Death Eater who murdered Dumbledore, but I went to the side of the dying man anyway. To this day I don't know why, maybe deep down I know that no one should ever have to die alone or maybe I sensed there was more to this man, either way it was fortunate that I did to be honest. Snape retrieved some memories which we took and bottled in a flask (thank you Hermione again!). He told me to take these memories to the pensive, then said I had my mother's eyes and then passed away. It was usually people who cared about me or my parents who would mention my eyes, I think I knew then that things weren't quite as they seemed. On entering the pensive I discovered a number of things, some of the details I will leave out as they were very personal to Severus, but I will list the important stuff. Firstly I learned that despite his dislike of me at times he genuinely cared about me and risked his life many times to protect me, he only went undercover as a Death Eater to enable my protection and to act as a spy for Dumbledore. I also found out that he was under Dumbledore orders to kill him, as I said earlier it was a mercy killing to save him from a long painful death. Most importantly I learned that when Voldemort tried to kill me his soul was so damaged due to creating Horcruxes that it fragmented again and part of it latched on to the last living thing in the room, me. This was the reason for the mental connection between myself and Voldemort, I was the Horcrux he had no idea he had made. In this particular memory I also saw Dumbledore explain to Severus that the only way that Voldemort would ever be able to die is if I died at his hands, the destruction of the last Horcrux involved my demise. Needless to say I was left feeling shocked and quite frankly betrayed. My mentor and hero Albus Dumbledore had been keeping me safe so I could hunt down parts of Tom Riddles soul and then at the right moment, die.

While all this was going on a horrific battle was in progress at Hogwarts, the defences had been all but broken and we were moments away from having Death Eaters inside the castle. People I knew personally had been killed and it was only going to get worse unless I acted soon. Voldemort had already announced a ceasefire and allowed an hour for either someone to turn me in or for me to face him myself; otherwise he was going to "kill every man woman and child who stood in his way". This was it I had no choice; I had to face him and die to save my friends.

I spoke to those closest to me and instructed them to kill the snake, said my farewells and headed to the forbidden forest to meet my fate. When I found Voldemort I put up no fight, made no grand speeches and neither did he to be honest. It was all over quite quickly, he lifted his wand and the last thing I remember was the familiar flash of green before everything went black.

Now I know there are many rumours flying around about how I got killed in the forest that night and miraculously came back to life, but again like most of the stories you've heard it's just not true. For the 2nd time in my life I had survived the killing curse, not because I'm special but because a plan made by Dumbledore had gone spectacularly well. When I hit the ground that night I went into what I believe to be a dream state. Some may speculate that I could have been in some kind of limbo and I'm not ruling that out either but I believe it was my mind putting together pieces of a puzzle and giving me the answers I already knew. In this dream state I found myself on kings cross station talking to Albus Dumbledore. He explained to me that I wasn't actually dead, but instead Voldemort had only succeeded in killing the part of his own soul inside of me, thanks to him taking my blood to enable his "rebirth" and tethering me to life alongside him because of the protection my mother had provided during her sacrifice. Once again my mother's love had prevailed. It was a great relief to learn that Dumbledore hadn't set me up to actually die at least! However I had to believe that I was going to be killed to provide a similar protection to my friends at Hogwarts, the intention to die for them would be enough to protect them for the upcoming battle!

When I regained consciousness I knew that jumping up and revealing that I was still alive would only result in me being killed, for real this time. So I kept very still and all present assumed me dead, except for Mrs Malfoy who was sent to check if I was actually deceased. Bear in mind that by this point she was a scared mother desperate to know if her son was still alive. I discreetly indicated that he was, and she in turn lied to Voldemort and pronounced me dead.

How I didn't blow my cover while my "body" was being carried back to Hogwarts I will never know, pretending to be dead is harder than it looks, trust me! On reaching the castle Voldemort gave his expected victory speech and proceeded to humiliate my good friend Neville for daring to stand up to him. He put the sorting hat on his head and set fire to it, big mistake. Many will know the story of how a certain house sword will appear to a true Gryffindor in their time of need, in fact it already happened to me during the chamber of secrets episode. Well, in true fashion the sword of Gryffindor presented itself that night courtesy of the sorting hat and Neville seized his chance and chopped Nagini's head off there and then! Tom Riddle's final Horcrux was gone.

The battle that then ensued was bloody and horrific, the intricate details of which I will not go into because the people present have already lived through it once and do not need reminding of their loss and suffering that occurred that night, one day I may even come to terms with it myself. However, Dumbledore's plan had worked and although many people were injured the Death Eaters didn't manage to do much in the way of killing, spells were rebounding left right and centre because my fellow Hogwarts students were being protected by my believed sacrifice!

Well I had to reveal myself to Voldemort at some point and when I did he was obviously surprised to say the least. We faced each other for the last time at Hogwarts, finally equals, well in physical terms at least. Unfortunately for him I knew something he didn't.

Remember I talked about wandlore earlier and asked you to remember a few things? Well this is where it will all make sense. Draco Malfoy disarmed Dumbledore before his death, which under wandlore would suggest that Dumbledore's wand would answer to Draco. Severus Snape didn't divulge this little detail to Riddle even when faced with death; I believe this was another deliberate attempt to swing things in my favour. Now, I disarmed Draco at Malfoy manor which would suggest that when Voldemort stole Dumbledore's wand it would answer to me and not Snape right? It was a long shot but it was the best hope I had! I knew I was never going to be able to use a killing curse, I just don't have it in me to hate that much despite everything Voldemort had done to me, and I needed an alternative and fast.

I addressed Tom Riddle by his real name, explained to him that I was likely to be the master of his wand and told him to consider handing himself over and trying to find remorse somehow, giving him an opportunity to mend that broken soul of his. I knew he wouldn't listen but I had to give him a chance. I know being fair to him should have been the last thing on my mind but no matter what he had done I wasn't about to stoop to his level.

Naturally everything I said went right over his head and he launched his killing curse right at me anyway, at exactly the same time I attempted to disarm him. Expelliarmus. You heard right, Expelliarmus. Yes, I know it's basic, yes it's hardly the sort of spell to throw at the darkest wizard of all time and believe me I've been told off for using it at Death Eaters in the past but it's all I had and it actually worked.

Voldemort's wand flew out of his hands and due to its allegiance to me it spun round and sent his killing spell right back at him before landing in my hands.

That was it, Lord Voldemort was dead. And he'd pretty much killed himself with his own spell.

There will be many of you feeling very apprehensive about whether he is really gone this time but please rest assured he has no way of coming back. There was no spirit form to escape and find a way back, his body lay before us all there at Hogwarts, laid away from the bodies of his victims and taken away for burial in due course. I am completely unaware of his burial location and I believe it is something that will remain a closely guarded secret. Let's be honest it is probably better that way.

And that brings me to the end of my story. I hope what I've said today will help clear up any mysteries and rumours that have been circulating, there have been many I know. More than anything I hope that this may help some of you in your healing process, as I hope it may help in mine too.

There seems to be much speculation as to what I am going to do next, well the truth is I'm not too sure to be honest. For a couple of years I've liked the idea of becoming an auror and I may still do that but for now I am just looking forward to some time with my friends and those I consider family without the threat of Voldemort hanging over my head. Like everyone else caught up in this terrible war I need time to grieve for loved ones I've lost and try to find a way to move on. Many people have died fighting for my protection and although I know logically none of this was ever my fault I still need to learn to live with the events of my life.

I have been thanked by so many people so far and have been asked what they can do for me in return; well the truth is I want nothing. I am not a hero, I simply found myself the victim of circumstance and had to find a way out of it for everyone's sake, including my own. I would never have survived this without the help of my friends and the wizarding community as a whole, and for this I thank each and every one of you who has helped me in some way, big or small.

My name is Harry Potter. The boy who lived and survived thanks to love, friendship and a whole lot of luck!


End file.
